China's renewable energy growth leads the world

Over the past 10 years, China's total installed capacity of renewable energy power generation has increased by about 90 times, cementing its position as the global leader in renewable energy capacity addition.

According to the US National Energy Administration, in the past 10 years, China's total installed capacity of renewable energy power generation has risen to 1.1 billion kilowatts, of which hydropower, wind power, solar power and biomass power generation capacity ranks first in the world.

China's total installed wind and solar capacity has reached 670 million kilowatts, nearly 90 times what it was in 2012, the report said.

An employee works in front of a photovoltaic panel production facility in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, in June.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, China's renewable energy generation is expected to account for more than 50% of total electricity generation, and wind and solar power generation capacity will double.

China has led the way in renewable energy production figures for years, and is now the world's largest producer of wind and solar energy and the largest domestic and overseas investor in renewable energy, one analyst said.

Wei Hanyang, an electricity market analyst at research firm BlumbergNEF, said China has long been the country with the highest installed capacity of wind and solar PV, supported by a complete supply chain and robust policies that can be deployed quickly.

Due to the huge demand from the domestic market, China has an unparalleled advantage in promoting clean power installations, and the country's national grid operator can also ensure the production of renewable energy.

According to the National Energy Administration, renewable energy has become the main source of new installed capacity in the country.

The U.S. government said that in the first five months of this year, China's newly installed renewable energy power generation capacity increased to 43.49 million kilowatts, accounting for 82.1% of China's newly installed power generation capacity.

A decade ago, the figure was just 2.7 percent, when China was still heavily reliant on coal but relatively inefficient, the agency said.

In the past 10 years, China has also developed a complete renewable energy technology industrial system.

It is now able to independently design and manufacture the world's largest megawatt-class hydraulic turbine set, while solar power technology has also witnessed rapid development, with 10 megawatt offshore wind turbines entering mass production.

Therefore, the scale of development and utilization of renewable energy in my country last year was equivalent to 753 million tons of standard coal, reducing 2.07 billion tons of carbon dioxide, 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 450,000 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions.